The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution

Paul Avrich (editor)

Anarchists played a major role in the Russian Revolution, but they were
also among the earliest and most outspoken critics of the Bolsheviks.
In The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution, Paul Avrich presents some
fifty documents or extracts from 1917 to 1921, most of them translated
from Russian and taken from articles, manifestos, speeches, letters,
diaries, and poems. He supplements this with a general introduction,
notes on some individual documents, and a small number of black and
white photographs and political cartoons.

Avrich begins with some anarchist responses to the February Revolution.
A selection of pieces then tries to convey something of the variety of
anarchist ideas, on topics from atheism and anti-militarism to education
and visions of the future.

"We Anarcho-Syndicalists oppose collectivism (state communism)
with free anarchist communism, which recognizes the right of man
to his own life and to the full satisfaction of all his needs.
This right is seen not as vulgar huckstering, not as an exchange
for a specific quantity of labour, but as the participation of
each individual, according to his strength, in productive life."
[N.I. Pavlov, "The Free Commune and the Free City", 16 September
1918]

After the February Revolution, anarchists worked for syndicalism and
workers' control of factories. They urged social revolution and attacked
Kerensky's Provisional Government and the Constituent Assembly.

"The Constituent Assembly is still one of the illusions we must
get rid of. If the workers expect all good things to come from
the Constituent Assembly and put all their hopes in it they will
still remain under the old conditions. The Constituent Assembly
will be filled with capitalists and the intelligentsia. What's
more, the intellectuals can in no way represent the interests
of the workers. They know how to twist us around their fingers,
and they will betray our interests. Look over all the lists of
candidates to the Constituent Assembly. You'll find scarcely a
worker there. There is nothing there for us. We must win our
victories through direct combat and remember that the liberation
of the workers is the task of the workers themselves." [address
by Renev to the Fourth Conference of Petrograd Factory Committees,
10 October 1917]

Anarchists joined with the Bolsheviks in the October insurrection and
during the civil war many "Soviet anarchists" fought in the Red army.
Others, however, denounced centralisation and dictatorship, though violent
opposition was rare. And Bolshevik repression of anarchists intensified.

"We have reached the limit! The Bolsheviks have lost their
senses. They have betrayed the proletariat and attacked the
anarchists. They have joined the Black Hundred generals and the
counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. They have declared war on
revolutionary anarchism." [Burevestnik, 13 April 1918]

During the civil war, much of the Ukraine was controlled by the anarchist
commander Nestor Makhno, who fought armies both White and Red.

Included are some pieces by anarchists held in Bolshevik prisons and two
letters by Kropotkin, who died in February 1921 and whose funeral was
"the last time that the black flag of anarchism was paraded through
the Russian capital". The volume ends with the Kronstadt revolt of
March 1921 and extracts from Alexander Berkman's The Bolshevik Myth
and Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia.

The documents in Anarchists in the Russian Revolution offer a novel
perspective on the Revolution and insights into the history of anarchism.
Avrich does a good job with his introduction, but some familiarity with
the events of the Revolution and the history of socialist thought is
still assumed.